Abstract
Background: Bone tissue engineering is an important research area that uses biomaterials as support matrices for the growth of living tissues. Biomaterials provide the basis for growing tissue, allowing the repair and regeneration of natural tissue. In recent years, the preparation of scaffolds useful for bone tissue engineering has been increasingly studied, mainly due to the great capacity of these structures to restore or regenerate tissues quickly.
Objective: This literature review aims to prove the linear growing use of the main conventional methodologies used to produce scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. In addition, the conventional preparation methods, such as the formation of gas foams, emulsification, electro-spinning, leaching and phase separation are presented.
Method: The study was based on a bibliometric research, where more than four hundred papers were 141.160 papers were classified using the CAPES - Portal of Periodicals (CAPES-PP). More specifically, the keyword “scaffold” was used alone and in association with each of the conventional techniques here presented.
Results: As proved here, conventional methods undergo an increasing relative importance, showing an increasing rate during the studied years equivalent to 0.70±0.05 works/year (R2 = 0.92). In 2016, conventional techniques accounted for more than one-quarter of the publications about the subject.
Conclusion: The obtained results allow concluding that the scientific community is looking for reliable, cheap and efficient ways to produce this kind of technology on a larger scale and the conventional techniques are the most solid pathway to spread up this technology.
Keywords: Biomaterials, bone tissue engineering, conventional preparation techniques, polymers, regeneration of natural tissue, scaffolds.
Graphical Abstract
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